Game of Choices
by the ramblin rose
Summary: Dandrea, short (non-romantic). S2, Ep3 "Save the Last One." Daryl always guessed she was simply playing a game that she couldn't really win.


**AN: This is in a series of "shorts" that I'm doing for entertainment value as I rewatch some episodes. Some of them are interpretations/rewrites of scenes that are in each episode. Some are scenes that never happened but could have in "imagination land". They aren't meant to be taken seriously and they aren't meant to be mind-blowing fic. They're just for entertainment value and allowing me to stretch my proverbial writing muscles. If you find any enjoyment in them at all, then I'm glad. If you don't, I apologize for wasting your time. They're "shorts" or "drabbles" or whatever you want to call them so I'm not worrying with how long they are. Some will be shorter, some will be longer.**

 **This one is partially from the show and partially of my own creation/embellishment.**

 **I own nothing from the Walking Dead.**

 **I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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She was so damn worried about the fate of that Walker, swinging from the tree like a morbid piñata, that Daryl couldn't stop himself from asking her the question that had been burning in his mind since they'd started walking together.

"So you wanna live now?"

Andrea stared at him in the glow of their flashlights. He'd seen enough of her reactions to things that he couldn't really believe that she'd ever actually wanted to die. Daryl imagined that, at the CDC, what had happened was more along the lines of the game he used to play with Merle to pass the time. They'd offer each other two pretty gruesome ways to die and then leave the other to say which they'd choose. The whole point of the game was that neither way to die was something you actually wanted. You had to reason your way through actually saying whether you'd prefer something like dismemberment or being burned alive. The true answer was always neither, but that wasn't an option. And that's what the hell Daryl figured happened to Andrea at the CDC.

 _Would you rather get chewed up and die slow like your kid sister, or would you rather blow up real quick like and just be entirely gone? The answer was neither, of course, but if you had to choose?_

Daryl thought he could understand it. What happened to her? Quick and painless sounded good when you were shitting your pants at every turn for the alternative.

"Just a question," Daryl pressed.

He held back the somewhat childish instinct to insist to her that he'd told her something about himself and his life, and he didn't care for sharing as much as some did, so now she owed him something.

She sighed and looked back at the swinging dead man. Then she looked at Daryl and nodded her head gently.

"An answer for an arrow," she said.

Daryl considered it. He wasn't getting that arrow back. Retrieving it would be impossible. Or, at the very least, it would be more trouble than it was ultimately worth. He had a good chance of running up on more arrows—especially with so many survivalists seeming to opt out and leave all their worldly goods behind—but being short wasn't something he really relished in this world.

Still, he was almost desperate to know if Andrea really wanted to kill herself. He didn't know why, exactly, but he wanted to know. He wanted to know if he should be watching her—not that Dale ever seemed to let her be out of his sight for very long. He wanted to know if he should expect her to up and find a creative way to take care of the job. But, more than that, he wanted to know if he needed to use the walk back to the highway to try and talk her out of it.

Because—whether or not it really should've mattered to him—it mattered to Daryl. And he didn't want the blonde woman offing herself.

He nodded.

"OK," he agreed.

"I don't know if I want to or if—I have to," Andrea said. "Or if it's just habit."

Daryl waited her out, expecting more of an answer than that, but she didn't give it to him. She just stood there. And maybe she'd told him the truth—maybe she didn't know exactly _why_ she was living. Maybe she wasn't sure that she actually _wanted_ to keep on living. What she had told him, though, in her own way, was that she wasn't planning on opting out. She wasn't going to kill herself—she just wasn't exactly relishing life.

And maybe that was true for a few of them.

Daryl raised the crossbow and fired the bolt into the skull of the swinging Walker. The movements stopped. The rustling quieted. He lowered the crossbow.

"Shitty answer," he said. "Waste of an arrow."

Andrea fell silent with his scolding, but she followed closely behind him as he led her back toward the highway. Once they'd walked for a moment, he felt guilty for scolding her. It had been a pretty shitty answer, but maybe it was the best one that she had to offer.

"Coward's way out," Daryl said.

"What?" Andrea asked, seemingly surprised that he was talking to her despite how friendly they'd been on the walk away from the highway.

"Offing yourself," Daryl said. "Coward's way out. Had you figured for more than a coward."

"If not wanting to get torn apart makes me a coward, then I guess that's what I am," Andrea offered.

Daryl hummed.

"Or you just don't get your ass torn apart," he offered. "Don't be stupid. Be smart about it. Learn to take care of yourself. For if there ain't somebody there to save your ass. Don't get torn apart. But don't be a damn coward about it." Andrea stopped walking. Daryl stopped, too, when he heard her shoes no longer shifting the leaves under them. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure that she was still there and nothing had happened. She was just standing there. "Something wrong?" Daryl asked.

"I wish everyone would stop looking at me like I'm suicidal," Andrea said. "I'm not going to put a gun in my mouth. I'm not going to—hang myself from a tree. What Jenner offered? It was a way out. A fast, painless escape from all this shit. An end to pain, sorrow, and grief. That's what he said. I don't have to get torn apart and I don't have to see it happen to anyone else—I would've just sat there and watched the countdown until I was just gone."

"So you don't wanna kill yourself?" Daryl asked. Andrea shook her head and he chuckled to himself. "Figured," he said. "You never did. Just—making the better choice."

"Better choice?" Andrea asked.

Daryl sighed.

"Would you rather—get torn apart by Walkers or get blown up?" He asked. "Either or. You gotta pick one. Catch is? You don't want neither one. But you still gotta make a choice."

"My choice was made for me," Andrea said.

Daryl immediately knew what she was referring to. He nodded his head at her, acknowledging her feelings on the matter more than confirming that he felt the same way.

"Maybe so," he said. "But—now you got other choices." Andrea nodded her own head at him, but she didn't say anything. "What do you wanna do right now? If you—had your pick?"

"Of ways to die?" Andrea asked.

Daryl laughed to himself.

"No, dumbass," he said. "Of ways to _live_. What would you do with your life right now?"

"Right now?" Andrea asked. Daryl hummed and nodded, feeling a little better that she didn't look as down as she had for a moment there—and feeling a little less guilty for dragging her down when she'd seemed in slightly higher spirits earlier. "I'd find Sophia," Andrea said. "For Carol."

Daryl nodded.

"Good choice," he said. "Come on—before we've got Dale pissing his pants that I ain't brought you back yet. Find her in the morning."


End file.
